In June 1986, Jewish Week columnist Chris Gersten wrote a blunt little essay about a big mistake. After the AWACS defeat, he argued, the pro-Israel world had over-invested in one party and under-invested in the other. If you cared about Israel’s security, you needed relationships with Republicans too. That argument, unfashionable in much of the Jewish world at the time, helped seed an institution that would become the Republican Jewish Coalition. It was a strategic correction, not a conversion experience: broaden the coalition, protect the core interest.
Two years later, a JTA investigation surfaced disturbing figures on the fringes of GOP ethnic outreach. It forced a reckoning many preferred to avoid. Here is the point I take from that episode: institutions evolve when they are pushed to mature. The work of Jewish politics in America has always been to keep two ideas in tension at once: historical memory and contemporary alignment, and to use that tension to shape better behavior.
Fast forward. Within the GOP, Israel moved from a plank to a project. The embassy move to Jerusalem was implemented after decades of promises; the Abraham Accords turned a speculative “peace process” into a set of working relationships. You can dislike the personalities involved and still recognize that these were structurally important acts. The RJC did not sign the proclamations, but it helped create the incentive structure in which those decisions became thinkable, then doable. That is what serious political organizing looks like: less glamour than gravity.
Their theology is not mine. Their consistency on Israel is indisputable
So why am I participating in the RJC gathering in Las Vegas this weekend?
Let’s start with coalition maintenance. For years, many Jews treated evangelical Christians as an awkward ally. Some still do, with vigor. I don’t. I have stood onstage and recited verses from the Hebrew Bible with former VP Mike Pence. I have prayed with Ambassador Mike Huckabee. Their theology is not mine. Their consistency on Israel, however, is indisputable. In a season when Israel has fewer instinctive friends in elite institutions, it is malpractice to spurn the millions who are leaning in. Good politics is not about liking every note in a coalition’s soundtrack. It is about recognizing who shows up when it matters and giving them real work to do.
There is also generational work. The American conversation about Israel has not only polarized, but it has also decoupled from its historical context. Younger Americans, including younger Republicans, have been formed by social media and trends. They know slogans, not the long memory of 1948, 1967, 1973, or the events of the second intifada from 2000 to 2005. An organization like the RJC should function as both a political lever and a civic school: teach deterrence without triumphalism, teach Palestinian dignity without euphemism, teach why regional integration is not a photo op but an operating system. If today’s leaders are reliably pro-Israel, the bar for their successors should be higher, not lower: knowledge over applause.
The third reason is so simple and a basic trait in Judaism: institutional gratitude. Movements are built by people, some of whom pay a personal price. Someone funds the field operations, the data, and the rooms where lawmakers are briefed by people who actually know what they are talking about. Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson has become a shorthand for that architecture, which is convenient but incomplete. The story spans decades of work, including collaborations with the late Sheldon Adelson and other donors and organizers who helped put muscle behind a set of commitments. In the past year, Israelis across politics watched her press the hostage cause with a persistence that did not fit the caricatures. If you value that kind of persistence, you don’t applaud from afar. You show up, say thank you, and invite more partners into the work.
A word about “stats,” because we love numbers when they flatter us and mistrust them when they don’t. The Jewish vote remains largely Democratic. That is a sociological fact with deep roots. At the same time, the Republican share is higher than it was a generation ago, and the GOP’s intensity on Israel is higher still. Both things can be true. Politics, then, is not about demanding a demographic rebirth that will not come. It is about maximizing real leverage where it exists, swing states, persuadable cohorts, and legislative choke points, while preserving a bipartisan floor sturdy enough to survive election cycles.
If this sounds like an argument for pragmatism, it is. Democracies run on coalitions. The RJC’s job, at its best, is to keep a critical coalition engaged, informed, and effective, while signaling to Democrats that support for Israel is not a partisan trophy to be won or lost in a single news cycle. The goal is simple and unromantic: rebuild Israel’s resilience after a shattering two years, repair frayed trust in Washington, and widen the circle that began with the Abraham Accords so that normalization becomes less a headline and more a habit.
Las Vegas is a noisy place for serious work. But the work is serious. I am going because I want to empower the allies who are already with us, nudge the wavering, and complicate the minds of the young who have only been handed slogans. I am going to honor those who took the heat when writing checks and making calls was unfashionable, and to challenge them kindly, firmly to invest just as much in the long game of education as in the short game of elections.
If the 1980s taught the Jewish world to build ties with Republicans, the 2020s demand that we professionalize those ties and keep a hand extended across the aisle. That is how you protect a small country in a hard neighborhood. That is how you turn moments into structures. And if the proof isn’t in the pudding, it is at least in the hummus: you strengthen the partnership by showing up, and you keep showing up until the map changes again.